FF Dagny

FF Dagny is a five weight family of sans serifs in the “grotesk” style. In 2002, Dagens Nyheter (DN) – Sweden’s largest daily newspaper – switched from broadsheet to tabloid format. This accompanied a major change in DN’s journalism, editing and design.

Mario García had redesigned DN in 2000. Pangea design’s Creative Director, Örjan Nordling, had worked with DN as a design consultant in 1996. For the redesign, Nordling was commissioned to create a typeface exclusively to the newspaper: DN Bodoni. As the new tabloid format required more compact setting, Pangea was also commissioned to credit a matching sans serif: DN Grotesk.

Years later, Nordling’s colleague Göran Söderström transformed DN Grotesk into the FF Dagny family. This required several adjustments, and the typeface’s characters were redesigned together with the FontFont type department. Among other changes, the stroke contrast was reduced – for better legibility in small sizes – and the new family included a range of consistent weights from Thin to Black. This range makes FF Dagny perfect for use both in body text as well as in all other kinds of applications.

The name Dagny is an abbreviation of Dagens Nyheter, as well as an old nordic female name meaning “new day.” FF Dagny received an ISTD International Typographic Award in 2011.